


refraction

by That_Ghost_Kristoff



Series: into the desert [4]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Communication, Everyone Needs A Hug, F/M, Gen, Human Disaster Anakin Skywalker, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Protective Ahsoka Tano, Protective Obi-Wan Kenobi, Protective Padmé Amidala, Tatooine Slave Culture (Star Wars), Unreliable Narrator Anakin Skywalker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-11
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 19:53:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29356011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/That_Ghost_Kristoff/pseuds/That_Ghost_Kristoff
Summary: As the second year of the Clone Wars draws to a close, Anakin Skywalker confronts half a lifetime of cultural misunderstandings, routine miscommunication, and inappropriate adult behaviour.
Relationships: Anakin Skywalker & Ahsoka Tano, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker, Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker
Series: into the desert [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2135958
Comments: 15
Kudos: 213





	refraction

**Author's Note:**

> No one in this fic knows what they're doing, but they're trying.

On the third night of the Festival of Stars, midway through the second year of the War, Anakin Skywalker arrives at Padmé’s— _his—_ front door with nothing but himself to offer. It’s been seven days since he returned from the front. Six days since a creature he helped capture fell from the Senate Building, dead. Five long days of little sleep, Jedi-Senate discussions on species’ rights, military debriefings, and official forms. His stress is visible; there are insomniac shadows under his eyes dark as punch bruises, a drop in his shoulders, and wanness to his skin. He’s exhausted straight through his bones, deadened to anything much in the Force that extends further than arm’s reach.

After all that, he is, undeniably, unprepared for anything more complicated than a fête night with his wife. 

What he is or is not prepared for is inconsequential, because awaiting him beyond that door is a trial: a quartet of people who care sat together on sofas far too comfortable for the oncoming conversation, four untouched glasses of deep red wine and one of untouched muja juice, and a wooden board of cheese and olives all brought from Naboo yesterday evening. The glowpanels on the ceiling illuminate the scene in stark, clear light, shimmering on the liquid and glass tabletop, and highlighting the room’s occupants. Jobal Naberrie, the contributor of the wine and the nibbles—the organiser of this small congress—perches on the edge of her cushion with her back unnaturally straight and mouth in a line. Beside her, her daughter fiddles with the japor snippet on her necklace, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees as she stares, unseeing, at the oil-slick olives on the board; Ahsoka worries her lip, stops when she remembers that she shouldn’t, then starts again when her thoughts wander; Obi-Wan hasn’t looked away from the door once in the last twenty minutes. Anakin is late. They’ve all been waiting like this, silent, for twice as long.

Jobal Naberrie is the organiser of this gathering, but Ahsoka is the catalyst. Ahsoka, who after the creature from Malastrade fell dead from the Senate Building realised she didn’t _like_ the way the Chancellor placed his hand on Anakin’s back, or the way that his muscles stiffened at the contact, or how the Chancellor glowered at her for daring to ask if she should come along, went to Senator Amidala and said, “Don’t you think it’s weird?” She couldn’t go to Master Obi-Wan, she knew. Master Obi-Wan was Anakin’s master first, and the Chancellor, she also knew, had been friendly with him for _years._ No, Master Obi-Wan would not find it weird. But, she thought, Senator Amidala might. 

Senator Amidala did not, in fact, find it weird. 

Or at least, she didn’t that night. She hadn’t, not once, until two days later, when the thought kept niggling at her when she tried to sleep and her husband wasn’t there, so she tried him on his comm, but then he said he couldn’t come because the Chancellor wanted to see him. It was late. Far too late to reasonably justify a formal meeting—already, the antique pendulum clock standing in the main room tocked towards the twenty-second hour. She slept on it, or more accurately _didn’t_ sleep on it. Then she contacted her mother, who was halfway into her journey to Coruscant. When she asked why, her mother said, “You almost die from the plague, then I have to see the city get attacked by a monster on live holovision? Of course I’m coming.”

Though Ahsoka was the catalyst, Jobal is the one who said, “It sounds like what you need is an invention, millaflower. You’ll need the man he talked about—Benobi, was it? Oh, right. Kenobi. Him. And the girl. Ahsoka? Yes, I know you’re his wife—all right, we won’t use wesk- and herf-words in front of _the other ones_ , but if his...sister is right, then what he needs there is his friends. No, no, don’t worry, I can lead it. I have wine.”

Later, as she reclined before her daughter’s dining table with her blossom wine and her shuura tart, she also said, “I always _thought_ there was something off about the man,” with the man meaning Chancellor Palpatine, as if she hadn’t initially supported her daughter’s decision to place one of their own in charge of the Senate. But that was eleven years ago. These days, there’s a war, an intergalactic refugee crisis, mass economic failure, political corruption, and collapsing infrastructures across the Republic. That Palpatine was born in Theed is no longer enough for her to overlook his less-than-desirable political theatre. She claimed she _always_ thought there was something off about the man because it sounded better than admitting the thought was a recent one, but the end result was the same: when her daughter came to her saying, “What Ahsoka said just keeps bothering me. I mean, it is a little weird, isn’t it? That he started asking for Ani alone when he was nine,” Jobal accepted the possibility that the Chancellor may be acting immoral towards her son-in-law without much pause. 

When Ahsoka liaised with Obi-Wan about the Naberries’ plan in the kitchen of the rooms he no longer shared with Anakin, he accepted it almost as readily. “There are extenuating circumstances,” he told the girl when she demanded why he hadn’t intervened earlier. He couldn’t explain about grief and miscommunication and what he’s beginning, regretfully, to understand is the Council’s outright negligence towards the same boy they call the Chosen One, even as she stood at the end of his table, hands curled into indignant fists at her sides and her mouth curled down into a scowl. More than that, what he expressly could not explain, in answer to her demanding, “Then why now?” is that in the past year, he hasn’t stopped thinking about his old padawan’s skittish response to learning the Chancellor personally approved his citizenship. 

He talked to Padmé, alone, in the privacy of her central room. Padmé said, “I didn’t end things, like you asked,” and told him bluntly, “We’re having sex,” then added, “Is that really what’s important?” when he said he should be reporting the relationship to the Council. 

It wasn’t until he was standing at the register in CoCo Town Flimsiplasts that he thought, _If they’re attached, then what am I?_ He bought three books on helping family members cope with trauma, because Padmé was right: this wasn’t, as she said, his area of expertise. As the young Twi’lek behind the counter calculated the total, she told him about a practice of good minders on the northern edge of the Uscru District, which hadn’t done much to improve his prediction about what would be the ultimate result of Jobal Naberrie’s “intervention.” 

Two days later, Anakin enters Padmé’s apartment without a knock, with his own key. When he sees them, he freezes in the doorway, gaze jumping from the cheeseboard and the wine to his old master and current padawan, Padmé and her mother, and they, in turn, take in him: the little colour left in his face draining, his sharp eyes unfocused and glassy from sleeplessness, the shadows nestled in spaces where the war’s sapped weight from his body. There’s a drag on his shoulders that wasn’t there last week, before the meetings and debriefings and forms. The light from the corridor outlines him, leechng him of colour.

He takes them in, and they take in him.

Obi-Wan registers the no knock, the owned key. _Oh_ , he thinks, somewhat inappropriately. _There’s no ignoring this now._

Ahsoka registers the colourless fatigue and thinks, _Oh Force, this won’t be pretty._

Padme, as she watches her husband tense, thinks, _This doesn’t look good_. At the same time, she observes the unfocused eyes, the boniness, and thinks, _Goddess, the War will be the death of him._

Jobal Naberrie, who hasn’t seen her son-in-law in over a year, catalogues every difference between the war hero on holovision and the boy in the doorway. Despite his public reputation, it’s not difficult, when meeting with him in the same physical space, to remember that he’s—twenty, twenty-one? _Goddess,_ she thinks, _my daughter snatched him young_.

Anakin doesn’t know what they’re thinking, but he can guess. Before he flees, Obi-Wan clears his throat, and sits straighter. “We need to talk, Anakin,” he says, as Anakin’s eyes slide from him to Ahsoka to his mother-in-law to Padmé, then back to him. Obi-Wan’s eyes are very much the same as his, glassy and dull.

“It’s not about us,” Padmé adds quickly, so Anakin and Obi-Wan wince as one. “Please, Ani,” she says, because he still hasn’t moved and his whole body’s too taunt. “It’s important.”

“There are wine and nibbles for you,” her mother says, and frowns, flitting her gaze from Obi-Wan to Ahsoka and back to Anakin. “All you Jedi are too skinny.”

Reluctantly, he enters. Padmé sips her wine. When she grimaces, he glances at her, but slides his attention away to the rest of them, and though he chooses the seat beside her, the gap he leaves between them is cavernous. 

For a moment, no one speaks. His mother-in-law eats a cube of cheese off a toothpick, chews, swallows. The moment expands. Outside, a lackluster sunset burns above the cityscape, streaking through the wall of windows to halo she and Obi-Wan and Ahsoka, the columns and the staturery and the fountain. The first two moons hang, transparent grey, above the Senate Building. Anakin, who faces the window, focuses on the candied light varnishing the Rotunda’s mushroomed roof to avoid looking at the others. The droids are missing, he notices belatedly. That’s never a good sign.

His mother-in-law ends the silence first. “Your friends are very worried about you, Anakin,” she says with a glance to Obi-Wan that borders on a glare. His shields are too tight at the moment for Anakin to glean the reason, but Ahsoka’s wriggling guilt heralds nothing good. As she struggles to maintain her mental barriers, Padmé’s mother goes on, “ _I’m_ very worried about you, after what Padmé’s told me. About your friendship with the Chancellor.”

Anakin blinks. “The Chancellor,” he repeats, toneless. 

“It’s not normal, you understand,” she says, gesturing, as though a forceful hand motion will emphasise her point, “for a grown man to befriend a child. And from what your friends have told me, you _were_ a child. Nine, was it?”

When he doesn’t answer immediately, Obi-Wan confirms it. “Because we’ve been pandering to the Senate for far too long,” he says bluntly, when she asks why the Council allowed it. “The Senate has control of the majority of the Order’s funding. Direct requests from the Chancellor are usually met. It was true of his predecessors as well.”

“What is this?” Anakin says, looking from Obi-Wan, who still avoids his eye, to his mother-in-law, who stares back until his skin prickles in discomfort.

“It’s creepy,” Ahsoka says, a note too loudly and a beat too quickly. “He’s creepy.”

“No he’s not?” he says, like a question, and smiles uneasily. “He’s just—” He stops. He drifts his focus back to the Senate Building, which reflects the orange sunlight back to the sky. At a guess, the Chancellor is there right now, bent over some tedious form. Yesterday, he asked Anakin to come around tonight—about now. Anakin said no. After the week he had, he wanted a night alone with his wife. 

Instead, there’s this. 

He feels his mother-in-law about to press, so he finishes, “The Chancellor just likes talking to someone who’s not a politician. He says. See? Nothing creepy. Is this seriously why you’re all here? Because the Chancellor’s nice to me?”

“You’re not his family,” says his mother-in-law, the matter-a-fact declaration stinging far more harshly from how completely he didn’t expect it, “and you weren’t a participant in a political youth programme that justifies a mentorship. There are programmes throughout the galaxy created to foster intergenerational connections in healthy environments. Asking the Jedi Council to see you routinely and alone is irresponsible and questionable. He knowingly used the power he had over them to access time with you.”

All at once, the sound of his own heartbeat is too loud inside his head and the flooding nervous energy mixes into a cocktail with the stress and exhaustion and confusion, so his ability to process warps, halfway to tipsy before he ever touches the wine. “Questionable?” he says, his mind catching on the word. “What do you think was—”

“What do you talk about?” Padmé’s mother asks, leaning forward. “What did you _used_ to talk about? Does he often make you feel like he’s the only one who understands you?”

“What—”

“For example,” she continues over his attempt to interrupt, “do you find that he has you talking about the negative aspects of your life in the Jedi Order more often than the positive ones? I know from General Kenobi and my daughter that you don’t always fit in with your peers. That it has to do with—”

“You’ve been discussing me?” he cuts in, unsure where to look, before settling on Padmé. She stares at him, her eyes wide and brows drawn. In her hand, she clutches the carved wood he gifted her, the leather cord tugged against her neck. He doesn’t want to be angry at her or Ahsoka or Obi-Wan, and despite all that he doesn’t understand about marriage, he suspects it’s bad form to have an open argument in front of his wife’s mother. “Why?” he asks. “I’d never do that to any of you.”

“They wanted me to have a better idea of the situation,” she says for the others as the uninspiring Corusanti sunset fades into an uninspiring dusk. “It was nothing too private. So now I know it wasn’t easy for you when you were growing up here. So, when you met with the Chancellor—when you meet with the Chancellor—and you two catch up on what you’ve been doing, how often does he make you feel like he’s the only one who can understand you? If you have something that makes you feel good, will you realise by the time that you leave that you were wrong?”

Anakin’s thoughts stutter. “Why are you doing this?” he asks the room, then recognises, a second too late, that he hadn’t answered the question. That this is bad. 

Vaguely, he thinks, _Yes_ , in the small, locked compartment of his thoughts were he firmly shoved any serious doubt or distress over his “relationship with the Chancellor” after Obi-Wan told him the man made him an official citizen just a week after his arrival on Coruscant _._ He mentioned it a few weeks after the night in Mimban, when the Council called the 501st home, as casually as he could, and the Chancellor explained that he thought Anakin knew. That the Jedi told him. It was fair, as far as explanations go. No one in the Order told him, either, because they hadn’t known he wouldn’t understand. He couldn’t blame them for that one, regardless of what the Chancellor thought. It wasn’t anyone’s fault but Darth Maul’s that Master Qui-Gon died before he told Anakin what happened on Tatooine. 

As he explained, the Chancellor sat beside Anakin on the office’s sofa and apologised for the misunderstanding. Apparently, Anakin wasn’t as casual about asking as he thought. That was on him, too. 

Alarm shoots through his bond with Obi-Wan, a tug on their shields. His discomfort must have leaked. When Anakin glances over at him and Ahsoka, they’re sharing a pointed look he can’t decipher. It’s about him, but he’s still excluded. Though Obi-Wan’s excluded him before, and often, this is a first for her. As Anakin’s apprentice, she comes to him before anyone else. Until this moment, he assumed she was the only one who would, since with the war, he was often who Padmé spoke with last. 

Now there’s this. 

His world tilts as a partygoers’ speeder rushes past, as long as a bus and open to the sky, the ruckus fête laughter screeching so loudly it carries through the glass. Outside the apartment, city life continues as normal. Inside, for the fourth time, the axis of his life shifts.

Jobal Naberrie’s saying, “I know this is hard for you to listen to, Anakin,” as he turns his attention to her, away from Ahsoka, who stares at him, and Obi-Wan, who reaches for his wine to fortify himself against whichever direction he knows this conversation will head. “Not everyone who’s nice is genuine.”

“I know that,” he says, frustrated and agitated and forcibly not showing any emotion stronger than that. It would be bad form to fight with his mother-in-law during their third meeting, even if she’s looking at him the same way his wife will when she’s worried, with her eyes seemingly enlarged from worry but her mouth and shoulders set with the determination to fix the underlying problem. There’s no problem here. There was a problem, which is different than what she or her daughter or Ahsoka think, but he solved that months ago. “I’ve known that for years,” he says, folding his arms. “Why do all of you—”

“Ani,” Padmé says, quieter than her mother. “What you know objectively and what you can recognise aren’t necessarily the same. With the Jedi—” Sighing, she flits her gaze to the others, then back again. “You weren’t raised somewhere that you could learn the difference and the Jedi’s rules about emotion haven’t helped.”

Offended, Obi-Wan starts, “The Code does not encourage,” but quiets when Padmé’s mother silences him with an unveiled second glare. 

“So because I was raised on Tatooine,” Anakin says, avoiding details that Ahsoka, hopefully, still doesn’t know, “you think I’ve been, what, manipulated? Because someone’s nice?” If this was Tatooine, he would agree. Niceness was always a danger in Mos Espa, where streetwise confidence men tricked younglings into sex trafficking with a cold drink and a promise of a soft bed, or the wealthier owners led their slaves with sweet words and smile to Gardulla’s Pleasure Garden, so the lifeform didn’t know they were dying until they felt the first of the pain. That doesn’t happen here, in the Coruscanti Senate, even if for ten years, he thought a relatively benign version did. 

The Chancellor approved Anakin’s citizenship within a week. He never advertised it, nor asked for a favour in return. That alone should mean something. There’s no logical reason why that meaning would be negative. 

Ahsoka gnaws her chapped bottom lip, which appears close enough already to bleeding, then releases it. “He doesn’t let anyone near you,” she says, and twists one of Padmé’s expensive cloth napkins between her fingers. Her anxiety and humiliation grates against his own. “Like, at all. You have to admit that’s not normal.”

There’s a feeling in the Force, something jittering on the currents of it, ricocheting down to sting that part of him that’s always too aware of his surroundings. “If you’re so convinced this isn’t normal,” he says, addressing Padmé and Obi-Wan, who tense almost simultaneously, prepared, “then why do you keep pushing me at him?” 

It’s accusatory, the question, and the accusation laces tightly through Anakin’s voice. Across from him, Ahsoka shifts, and the white stripes above her eyes twitch, as his mother-in-law inclines her head to her daughter, her mouth pinched. In his peripheral vision, he watches Padmé finish her wine. Setting the glass on the table, she answers, “I didn’t think about it until Ahsoka asked me. I don’t know _how._ On Naboo, if this happened—” She stops, looking to her mother. 

“On Naboo this behaviour from an adult would call for an investigation,” she finishes as the wish globe in the gap between the sofas phases on in response to the falling night. 

“You have become the easy solution for the Council,” Obi-Wan says, low and tired, as Anakin lowers his arms, bracing his hands on either side of him to curl his fingers around the sofa’s edge. “Padmé is the only Senator worth a conversation. Since the War began, in any attempt to influence the other side of the political spectrum, it is simpler to utilise a relationship already formed. For that, I am sorry.”

In the light of the wish globe, the shadows raked over Obi-Wan body darken and his exhaustion sharpens. As Anakin stares at him, processing the rare apology, the “easy solution” and “this behaviour from an adult,” he abruptly thinks, _Fuck, they’re serious._

The Chancellor is his friend.

The Chancellor’s never hurt him. 

The Chancellor—

During their second meeting in his office, when Anakin was nine and had been a padawan for months but was still not done reeling from what he thought was a change in his ownership, he said to the Chancellor, “People like us are never allowed to talk if we get separated, so I’m not surprised, but I miss her, you know?”

 _Did_ Anakin say “us?” Maybe not. Except, that’s how he remembers it. He tries to replace “us” with “me,” but it isn’t right. He knows it isn’t right, just like he knows the Chancellor answered that it was perfectly understandable for him to miss his mother, that it was cruel of the Jedi to withhold the opportunity to communicate with family, that his circumstances did not negate how utterly wrong it was for them to do so.

Of course, the Chancellor could have missed the pronoun or at least what it implied, or the connotation behind “your circumstance” may have only referred to Anakin’s role as a padawan. To adhering to the Code. Both options are entirely reasonable. He knows they are, but he also knows the Chancellor doesn’t miss things like the difference between “us” and “me.” It wasn’t the only time Anakin slipped up, either. Since the Chancellor is so easy to talk to, Anakin almost never monitors what he says. 

The Chancellor approved his citizenship within a week.

“Ani,” Padmé says, coaxing him out from the whirlwind of his thoughts and back into the room, “we’re not doing this to hurt you. We just want to help.” 

When Anakin doesn’t answer, Jobal Naberrie, as gently as his wife, asks, “When you see him, does he ask or imply that you should keep what happens in your meetings a secret?”

Numb, he nods. He can’t hold onto a thought long enough to allow it to form, nor fashion one into comprehensible speech. The Chancellor must have his reasons, he thinks, but it only leaves him feeling hollow. 

His mother-in-law says his name three times before he peels his attention from the wish globe and its soft yellow glow to focus on her instead. The light bounces on the prism hanging from her necklace, casting a rainbow across the central table. “This is going to be a difficult question, Anakin,” she says, as though the others have been easy. “Has the Chancellor ever—touched you?” 

Anakin’s racing thoughts brake to a halt. Ahsoka starts; Padmé reaches for his hand. When he snatches his away, everyone freezes. 

After a long beat of silence, he says, “No,” then adds, “I’m going for a walk,” and leaves, despite the group effort to call him back.

He strengthens his shields on his ride down the turbolift, blocking Ahsoka and Obi-Wan’s frantic concern, and exits onto the nearest street six levels down. When Obi-Wan catches Anakin before he reaches the stairway leading to the level below, he isn’t surprised. “Can’t you just leave me alone?” he says, sulking, but stops, leaning against the street’s transparisteel wall, hands tucked in his pockets and ankles crossed, eyes on his feet. 

With a sigh, Obi-Wan comes to rest beside him, arms folded across his chest and focus solely on Anakin. “No,” he says, angled close so he can keep his voice quiet. “This is important. I think you know that.” 

Around them, local pedestrians rush past, chatting in gaggles or chatting on comms, their arms leaden with the evening’s shopping or shoulders sloped sideways from their datapad bags. The Force pulsates with early night-time energy as glowpanels illuminate the windows around them, maintaining Coruscant’s eternal wakefulness. Anakin doesn’t want to be a part of it. He’s too tired to handle chaotic urbanity or whatever it is that Obi-Wan and the others hope to achieve with all of this. With all the questions. 

Again, Anakin doesn’t answer. This isn’t the sort of conversation to have in public, but returning to Ahsoka and Padmé and his mother-in-law or to the Temple would be worse. 

“Her mother is not wrong,” Obi-Wan says after a moment. He doesn’t say it as a question, not this time. It’s just a fact. “I believe, however, that there is more to the situation than you were willing to say with the others in the room. You and her are involved, but you never explained to her what you told me.”

That he says as a fact, too. When Anakin shakes his head, Obi-Wan continues, “I assumed on Mimban that your question had to do with her, but I was mistaken, was I not?”

“There were things he said,” Anakin says, mumbling. “Not a lot. It was probably nothing. I just thought. You know.” 

“That we had?”

“Yeah.”

A Kessurian and a human stroll past close enough to touch, the two arm-in-arm as they laugh about some new bartender they were hoping to see. Obi-Wan waits until they’re a decent distance away before he says, “I truly am sorry.” 

“Are you telling the Council about this too?” Anakin asks rather than acknowledge the second apology in one day. He isn’t entirely sure if by “this,” he means his relationship with Padmé, her mother’s suspicions about the Chancellor, or both. 

Though he doesn’t clarify, Obi-Wan still understands. “What _physical_ relationship you have on your own time,” he says, “is your own business. But depending on your answers about the relevant situation, then yes, I will. It would be to your benefit. What I said about funding is, unfortunately, the reality for the Order, but we all excel at being unreasonably evasive.” 

When Anakin laughs, the sound is embarrassingly wet, though he isn’t crying. “It’s not like that,” he says, shifting his weight. “I mean, yeah, if something’s wrong, he can usually tell and he asks about it, but that’s just being nice, isn’t it, and it’s not like he ever said not to tell anyone, but I thought I wasn’t supposed because, well. I thought I was, you know.”

“But he had an idea of what you thought,” Obi-Wan says, “and never corrected you.”

“Probably not. It’s probably—”

He lays a hand on Anakin’s shoulder. “I have no intention for this to be an attack on you,” he says. “Is that what you think? Honestly?”

It’s not. He knows that, and so does Obi-Wan. Still, there’s a harsh, tugging sense that Anakin has to retain his loyalty, that he shouldn’t doubt someone who was nice to him without obligation just because other people tell him that he should. Then he thinks of being twelve, of going on about how bad his classes were with his terrible agemates and the worse instructors and how he didn’t know what he would do without Master Obi-Wan, who was so great and was going to let him carry a lightsaber like a normal padawan. Of the Chancellor looking down at him, his head tilted in Anakin’s direction as they sat side by side on the sofa, frowning so the space between his brow creased into three lines. Of the Chancellor asking why Master Obi-Wan didn’t defend him. If he was so great, the Chancellor didn’t say, but he implied it. 

Even though the question was a fair one, that shouldn’t have been the important part of Anakin’s ramble. He said “like a normal padawan.” He _knows_ that’s what he said. Instead, what the Chancellor chose to comment on was whether Obi-Wan was as good as Anakin thought. 

“No,” he says finally, wishing he could shrink down into himself, to escape this conversation and everything it entailed. “I guess it’s not.”

Obi-Wan’s hand drops. “Her final question,” he says. “Were you honest in your answer?”

If he believed Anakin had been, he wouldn’t ask again. Anakin’s leg jumps, but he forces himself to still. “I wouldn’t be calling him nice if he had,” he says. “He’s touchy, but not like that. Not more than some other people. You’d have known.” He spent half his life terrified he’d end up in someone’s bed. It wasn’t abnormal on Tatooine, and he never entirely shook the fear. 

“Any invasion of your personal space is wrong,” Obi-Wan says, the alarm he felt earlier filtering into his voice. “Ani,” he says, meeting Anakin’s startled gaze when automatically, he looks over, “have you ever found that I—that anyone—has also been ‘touchy.’”

“What?” he says. “No, you—the Order’s not really affectionate, Obi-Wan.” Occasionally, he and Obi-Wan were more tactile than was usual among Jedi, and he and Ahsoka certainly were, but it was different. What constitutes that difference is too difficult to explain, so he doesn’t bother to try.

They’re silent for a while, listening and feeling the city hum and flow around them, until Obi-Wan asks, “Where would you like to go? I think it’s best we leave the street.”

In the seven days since he returned from Malastrade with the creature he helped capture and kill on the Chancellor’s orders, he hasn’t managed to spend any time in his wife’s bed. “Back to the Temple,” he says anyway, because the idea of facing her and her mother and Ahsoka all at once is too draining to contemplate for long. Ahsoka will leave. His mother-in-law will not.

Anakin texts Padmé, letting her know that he’s not angry and not to worry but he needs another night away, while Obi-Wan nods, and texts Ahsoka, presumably. He doesn’t ask if Anakin wants company or if he wants to be alone, but falls into step with him wordlessly as they start the journey home.


End file.
